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Citizen complaint of the day: Stop staffing golf courses with fuddy-duddies
By adamg on Thu, 04/12/2012 - 9:03am
A puttering citizen complains that he was forced to print out a coupon to get a discount on a round of golf at the Franklin Park course:
Boston Parks and Recreation requires golfers to print out coupons and physically bring them to the course to receive a discount. In this day and age, mister mayor, can you please force them to "GO GREEN" and allow people to present coupons via their smartphone? A lot of people, especially the young professionals you want to keep from moving away, don't own printers.
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Comments
really?
people don't own printers?
I haven't for about six years
I haven't for about six years now. What would I print? The internet?
That's why I have an expensive phone.
::shrugs::
My grandparents own a
My grandparents own a printer. They also have AOL and a landline telephone.
Own a printer but never use it ...
... thanks to the ink cartel. $20 for a plastic box of black powder that costs about 20 cents to produce, and maybe prints 50 pages? No thanks!
seriously? people can afford
seriously? people can afford to golf but can't afford a printer?
and since when is the government subsidizing GOLF when we don't have enough money (allegedly) to vaccinate poor kids against measles? WTF
Who says we're subsidizing golf?
Both the city courses are run by private companies that are supposed to be paying leases to the city.
And this is Massachusetts, with one of the best vaccination systems in the country (and, you know, that whole health-care thing going on). Where is there a problem in Boston with kids not being able to get measles shots?
the city has not leased out either course for a number of years
the last management company that leased the courses nearly destroyed them.... The city is running both of them way better and ensuring they will be a money making amenity for the city for years to come.
Ah! Thanks for the update
News obviously travels slowly up here in the mountain fastnesses, from which we peer down on the little Whos puttering about way down there at George Wright.
And discounting is a way to maximize profits
It's a simple business matter. Is utilization at 100%? If not, then the city can increase utilization with gimmicks and discounts. As long as the discounted greens fee is still more than the incremental cost of an additional player, the course will make more money. The vast majority of expenses for a golf course are fixed, so incremental costs are very low. I'm glad the city is trying to make as much money as possible.
A discount is not a subsidy.
No
Who said they can't afford it? Maybe they - like me - wouldn't use it very often and don't want to take up space. I tossed mine the last time I moved when I realized that in two years, I hadn't taken off the packing tape the movers used to secure the paper tray.
Next time consider Reuse or Freecycle
It's a shame to throw out working consumer electronics. Freecycle is particularly easy and well used here in the Boston area.
Just say no to printers
There's a Kinko's/FedEx place around the corner, open 24 hours. I can pop the SD card from my phone into one of their self-serve copiers and make a B/W print for a dime, around a quarter for color, for those rare occasions when I need a paper rendition of something. Much higher quality and probably in the long run cheaper than any of the rip-off printers I've ever owned.
Huh?
If these 'young professionals' don't own printers, chances are they don't own smartphones either.
What?
Part of my work is with parents of babies, so 75%ish are early 20s. Most have exactly what this person describes -- smartphone and no printer. About half don't have an additional computer either, because they say they don't have $1000 for the laptop and $50 a month for the Internet access when young and raising a kid in the hood. Makes sense to me.
But they can afford a
But they can afford a smartphone? Please don't tell Howie Carr - he'll be writing you up tomorrow.
Have you looked at smartphone prices lately?
You can find 1-cent smartphones these days.
data plans can be expensive
I'm a young professional, and I don't have a smart phone. The data plans are expensive.
Of course Adam knew that the
Of course Adam knew that the 'price' of smart phones is in the data plan.
You can get a smartphone for nothing
If you sign or extend your cell service contract. It won't be an iPhone, but it will have internet browsing ability and everything else that makes a phone "smart."
That's a little dramatic, don't you think?
How about <$300 for a netbook or tablet and free wi-fi just about anywhere? If you're going to cry poor, don't do it with a 4S in your hand and a $100/month phone plan.
For the record, I don't think a printer should be needed, either.
Family plans
If you get one with extended family, the price per person goes down.
We pay $150 a month for two iPhones. Cheaper per person than all the people I know who have one income and have cable. Do you assume that every person who has cable is rich? Because in the case, nearly everyone in the projects is loaded.
EEEK, eeka! Is this widespread?
Wow - 75% of the parents that you work with are in their early 20s?! Do you do most of your work far from Boston? How can one in their early 20s afford to live in or near Boston and also afford a child (whether you live in the "hood" or not)?
Of course I realize that there are people who have children in relative youth (for a variety of reasons), but do you work with a particular population where the figures are as you describe them? If not, do you think that numbers like that apply across the board? I just can't think of anyone I know who lives in greater Boston and who felt comfortable having children before being in their late (>27) twenties - and most have held off to near or above 30 purely for economic reasons.
I know lots of people in other parts of the country who had several children by their late twenties, but none of them lives anywhere near here.
plenty of parents in their 20s
Plenty of people manage to live in the city without planning to forego kids until they can "afford it." Many people have different plans or perspectives and it is interesting to go to a parent event and see the range of ages of the parents. Some people don't wait until they are "ready."
Yeah, what Dave said
In a lot of communities where people don't widely go to college or enter a professional career (or have already been in the family's line of work since they were 16), having a kid is the way to move into the role of being an adult. And for people with subsidized housing, it's often the only way people know to get their own housing.
(And no, not a specific "population" except for people in Southie and Dorchester who have babies. We certainly have upwardly mobile people who have kids in their 30s, but we have more younger parents.)
Thanks, eeka.
Ok, this is a little more helpful. Thanks. I was going to ask a follow up regarding whether you thought that it might ahve something to do with education (particularly enduring the costs associated therewith), but I don't think I need to now. Thanks again.
Intentionally having kids to
Intentionally having kids to get public assistance? I thought that was a social Conservative lie.
Not quite
Yes, it's a lie that people think "hey, I think I'll try and conceive a kid right here and now so I can get welfare." That is not at all widespread.
It's quite widespread that in communities with high poverty levels, having children in the late teens and early 20s is kind of what's expected that people do, and people who don't have kids (and thus don't have any way to get their own apartment) are viewed as not independent adults yet.
Roger that, DaveA, but...
Roger that, DaveA, but can you shed any light on the central question - does your "plenty" mean that at these parent events you go to that 25% of the parents are in their early 20s or that the numbers approach eeka's 75%?
I have similar experience to DaveA
Parent events in my case primarily means school events. I'm 41, and am generally among the older parents at my kids' elementary school. I don't have a percentage breakdown, but I'd say it's pretty evenly spread between people who had a baby when they were still a teenager, up to people like me, who were in their 30s. It is not as impossible to live in the city with kids as some of us are trained to think. Lots of people do it, representing a wide range of socio-economic positions.
Thanks HenryAlan - any thoughts on ...
Thanks, HenryAlan. I don't require hard statistics (despite the fact that they are often demanded by our fellow UHers), only the anecdotal type of evidence that you and others have provided.
Have you any thoughts on where you think you might fall in the parental age order if your kids' elementary school was in, say, Watertown? Weston? Northampton?
No thoughts whatsoever
I don't know a lot of people who live outside of Boston. The people I do know either don't have kids, or do and are about my age, but I don't know how the other families in those towns compare.
I'm not sure
whether to laugh or be upset by your trolling...
Young professionals don't own printers?
I'm sure their employers still do. ;)
In my apartment
of three young professionals, age 24, there is only one printer. This printer has no ink because it hasn't been used in at least 2 years. When we were in college, we could print in the library. Now, if we really NEEDED to print something, we print at work.
I'm in my late 20s, live in Boston, own a printer and an iphone
And almost never use the printer. I can afford ink, but that doesn't mean I want to buy it. The rare occasions when I use a printer at home are to print boarding passes or concert tickets - At some airline and some venues, you can present your phone for those too.
I'm even printing less at work. We have ipads, flat panel displays and/or projectors. We reduce the amount of printed meeting minutes and agendas. Printing takes longer and uses more resources.
What was it they were looking for at the golf course that could be printed on paper but couldn't be displayed on a 326 pixels per inch retina display?? Is it more official if you waste paper and ink?
Is your name Elmer J Fudd
And do you also own a mansion and a yacht?
Sorry - couldn't resist - simply rolled off my fingertips.
We own two printers - the ancient one really is now only used as a fax and the other almost never gets used except in an emergency. I think you may even have to break the glass with that little hammer to get at it. I think going forward in addition to going wireless we can probably make due with being printerless as well. That's what work printers are for.
Go ahead and tell my boss, we're on really good terms.
...AGAIN!
screwball!
More resources? Not really
You can make an argument that display-oriented "paperless" workflows are more comfortable and may increase productivity when well designed (although it's very common for perception to be at odds with objective measurements of this), but they are demonstrably far more wasteful of resources and energy than 'traditional' paper-based document flows.
The fabrication of those lovely display gadgets requires large amounts of irreplacable heavy metals, and produces mind-boggling amounts of industrial waste. Today's tablet comp would have to last at least a couple decades to reach the payback level, in terms of resourse consumption, and you and I both know that that's a completely unrealistic lifetime for your typical piece of electronica. In terms of energy use - it will never reach payback compared to the paper cycle.
I love (and use, and acquire) high tech gadgets too, but don't lie to yourself - you are not treading more softly on the earth by using them - quite the opposite.
Not a fair comparison
I seriously doubt anyone is buying a smart phone solely for the purpose of displaying golf course coupons. So you can't really compare that to printing.
I have a smart phone *already* so do I use the thing I already have in my pocket or print an additional thing to take with me?
Full disclosure--I would probably print the coupon because I'm old (ish) and don't trust my smart phone to have enough signal or the employee to have enough clue when I get there. My boss uses his smart phone to display his boarding pass when he travels; I would have an attack of the vapors if I could not clutch tangible evidence in my sweaty little hand as I go through security.
Using an iPhone you already
Using an iPhone you already own is by definition environmentally friendly. If you switched to an electronic device in order to replace the use of paper, that might not make sense. But if you bought an electronic device just because it was a nice thing to have, then using that instead of paper is a net win. Printing when you already own an iPhone is the worst of both worlds.
We don't accept coupons by phone at CVS either
In our case, we need the physical coupon to send back to our home office to get credit for it (the only non-physical coupons we accept are coupons send directly to our store rewards card through e-mail offers).
Please, move far away...
Another sad story this month on UH of a young Bostonian who will be forced to leave this city unless technology matches their hip, on-the-go lifestyle.
Please young professional, use your smartphone GPS and find a place to move to, far, far away.
Greens Fees
OK, I agree that it would be smarter to have the coupon be of both the printable and non-printable variety. However, we're talking about greens fees (and a cart) for golf.
I like golf. I've played golf (badly.) But golf isn't cheap, and anyone who can afford greens fees and a cart, even at a public course - not to mention buying clubs, gloves, shoes, balls, whatever - should not be too upset about this. We're hardly talking about a hardship in acquiring the necessities of life here. Go to the library and pay the quarter to use their printer. I mean, damn, the coupon is worth more than ten dollars off.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Restore the Park
Shut down the golf course. Then no one would have to bother with printers or smart-phones.
Seriously!
If you want the discount that badly, you can figure out a way to get the coupon.
That said, I don't disagree with the suggestion of also making the coupons available electronically, but why was it phrased in such a snotty way (by the original complainer, not any UHub folks who suggested it too)?
If you don't give me digital
If you don't give me digital access to coupons for golf, I'll take my money and move out of the city!
A smartphone is an
A smartphone is an electricity hog built of rare minerals and metals typically mined under abysmal circumstances, and which requires extensive physical infrastructure such as towers and space satellites to function.
I understand the general argument here, but a smartphone is not "green" and a printed coupon is probably no more environmentally destructive. A golf course is itself hardly a bastion of environmentally sound practices. I would suggest this is the greenwashed complaint of a slacktivist.
Um?
If you already HAVE THE SMARTPHONE, which many people do, it's more green to just pull up the coupon than to pull up the coupon and print it out.
misguided priorities
What's the environmental impact of a paper coupon?
And how does it compare with the impact of, like, the maintenance of a golf course?
Discuss the issue
So, are any of you really insistent that the coupon needs to be printed out for some reason or are you just being knee-jerk reactionary to the person's impolite request for it? Discussing the issue rather than shooting the messenger would improve the discourse.
For example, the CVS employee has a point. When they collect a coupon, it's to return to their head office so they can recover the temporary loss of that money. In their case, if they don't have the coupon, then they lose money. That's not the case with Boston Parks&Rec though. They might be using the coupons to keep a hard copy tally of the number of people who have been brought in by the coupon, but that hardly seems necessary if you could keep a running tally on a sheet of paper next to the register or something.
A coupon for this sort of discount seems pretty petty anyways. Why isn't this just a temporary rate change for anyone who comes in to golf on weekday mornings? It would get more attention than a coupon. This seems to be an attempt to fill very unused hours at the course and it's not as if they would be losing money in any way to just give the discount to everyone for the time being.
Where did the coupon come from anyway?
Can't find it online. Was it made available to a limited audience? If so, they may have made coupon presentation required in order to gauge the effectiveness of different communication channels.
Also, rereading the text of the coupon, I don't see where it requires a hard copy - it just says to present the coupon. Seems to me that someone who could cut a paste a pic to Citizens Connect could have a copy on their smahtphone as well.
What if I tattoo a reasonable
What if I tattoo a reasonable facsimilie of the coupon onto my butt?
Update: City says smart-phone coupons are just fine
Parks and Rec spokeswoman says so.